Day 62

I woke early to an increasing south wind, by the time the boat was loaded it had grown to a constant 10 mph wind with stronger gusts every 20 to 30 seconds. When the south wind gets up above about 7 mph it starts to blow the surface water back upstream, the deeper current fights the top water and lines of stationary waves build on the surface in the areas of higher current. I have only noticed this a handful of times on the river and if you can find the waves/current then you can make a slow but steady progress. So the first half of the day was spent working to keep the front of the canoe pointed into the waves and making slow progress. By around 1 the wind had picked up to a point that even with the current I was not able to make any noticeable headway so I put to shore. I spent several hours waiting for the wind to drop off and reading a book. About 4;30 the wind died down some and I back paddling. The barges had stopped running during the high winds but just like me they wanted to make up for lost time. I paddled along rocking on the current waves and barge rollers till close to dark. As I made camp and ate dinner I checked the radar and saw several lines of bad storms headed my way. I loaded my food buckets, water jug and backpack into the tent to give extra weight and stability during the storms. The first storms hit about 9, I spent an hour holding onto tent poles to prop the tent up against the wind and rain. After the storm passed I used my sponge to clean up the water and sand blow into the tent by the storm. Round two of storms hit just after midnight and I repeated the process a second time. Just after I finished cleaning up the tent I was jolted by the sound of tons of steel slamming into and grinding against rock. A looked towards the channel and saw a big tug trying to stop his barges from pushing further up on the underwater wing dam he had hit. The big tug spent an hour plus gunning his big engines working himself back off the rock before finally floating free. I settled in for another short nap before the sun came up.